COVER
Sweat, Soul & Magic
Lincoln’s Historic Zoo Bar Celebrates 50 Years of Keeping Roots Music Alive and Thriving by B.J. Huchtemann | Photos by Chris Bowling
“I
left buckets of sweat on that stage,” musician Johnny Reno remembered via email. Looking back on his gigs at Lincoln’s historic Zoo Bar, the sax man added, “It was cramped, it was hot, it was loud as a train, the sound system was weak, I fell off that stage more than once. WE LOVED THAT PLACE!” The Zoo Bar in Lincoln has been called an alley with a roof on it by local drummer Dave Robel. It was dubbed the Carnegie Hall of the Blues by Americana songwriting star Dave Alvin. The historic blues venue celebrates its 50th anniversary in July. Reno, a Fort Worth, Texas, musician and his band, Johnny Reno & the Sax Maniacs, packed Midwest clubs in the ’80s and ’90s with their blend of jumpblues and rockabilly. Reno was famous for charismatic showmanship that included playing his sax while doing spirited walks across tabletops and even on top of the bar. “The exuberance of the audience at The Zoo Bar took us by surprise,” Reno wrote. “From the first song, the place went crazy! Non-stop dancing around the whole room. We played, they danced, on a school night too, and they stayed as long as we did! It was unpretentious, it was rowdy, and the audiences loved to dance. “And, this is the most important thing,” Reno explained,
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Josh Hoyer [with his band, pictured above], Levi William, Sean Benjamin and Kris Lager were all raised and fed from the music of The Zoo. “The owner, Larry Boehmer, was a musician, a music lover, and a friend. He was so friendly and accommodating, not your usual club management experience. He was a lot like [Austin, Texas, club owner] Clifford Antone, always looking after the musicians that came to his club. As much as anything, Larry was the reason we enjoyed playing The Zoo Bar, because he knew what it took to get up there! The long drives, the crappy road food, the even more crappy motels, we just needed a good place to do our music.”
June 2023
The late Boehmer was the sole owner and talent booker of the club beginning in 1977. In the early ’70s, it was his friends Jim Ludwig, Bill Kennedy and Don Chamberlin who had purchased the bar. Boehmer began bartending at The Zoo Bar while working on his master’s in fine art at UNL. He was a hard-core blues fan in the days when it took pilgrimages to Chicago to find old blues recordings on vinyl. He soon got permission to stock the jukebox with blues. Dave Robel was part of the second band to play The Zoo
Bar in 1973 with The Megatones, one of Charlie Burton’s many bands through the years. Robel still gigs at The Zoo weekly as the drummer for the band Shithook, which plays live band karaoke most every Thursday at 9 p.m. Originally the bands set up along the north wall. “There was no stage, no PA, no lights,” Robel recalled via email. “Someone got the idea to put the bands in the back of the bar, east end. The problem was there was a foosball table there! So we had to carry the damn